Whatever happened to paint-by-numbers?

Macomb Daily staff photo by Ray J. Skowronek
Dan Robbins of Farmington Hills, who worked with the Palmer Paint Co. in the 1950s to create Craft Master Paint-By-Number kits, talked about the popularity of the hobby during this month’s Scholar Series at the Detroit Historical Society.

Pick a number, any number. Chances are Dan Robbins has a paint color to go with it.

In the 1950s, the Farmington Hills artist created the Craft Master paint kits for the Palmer Paint Co. in Detroit.

You might remember them as paint-by-number sets. For $2.95, you could become an artist, using an included brush and color and number matching formula to create your own masterpiece on a preprinted canvas (which really was window-shade material, according to Robbins). It was, well, as easy as 1,2,3.

The idea started in 1945. Max Klein, owner of Palmer Paint Co., wanted Robbins to come up with a set of poster paints for children with an image preprinted on washable canvas so it could be reused.

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But Robbins saw an idea for grown-ups, too, and at a time when he said there was a need for crafts and hobbies.

So he experimented with paints and came up with an abstract design putting numbers in corresponding areas for prospective artists.

Although his abstract didn’t appeal to Klein — “He hated it,” said Robbins — the businessman liked the idea and the project took off.

“Leonardo daVinci always numbered his assignments, so I took that idea from him,” said the 87-year-old Robbins during this month’s Scholar Series program at the Detroit Historical Museum.

The process hit a few errant brush strokes, such as what kind of containers to use for the paint in the kits. Glass bottles were too expensive, said Robbins, so they came up with the idea of filling empty gelatin capsules that were designed to contain medication. Great idea, with a slight hitch: The 10,000 capsules ordered from Eli Lilly & Co. came with tops and bottoms already put together, so Klein and company had to hire women to spend a weekend separating the 10,000 units. (A gallon of oil paint would fill approximately 1,000 of those capsules.)

Filling them was another matter — “sometimes we spilled more paint than went in,” Robbins recalled.

And according to the January-February Michigan History publication, a trial order of paint-by-number kits to Kresge’s sold well, so the retailer ordered more. The increased volume, however, led to a mix-up on the paint assembly line and Kresge customers started “returning their completed paintings, upset by such elements as red skies, yellow water, and pink boats.”

However, the kits’ debut the next year at the New York Toy Show, and with Klein able to get the product into Macy’s, “paint-by-numbers took off like a rocket,” Robbins said. Palmer Paint Co. sales went from $300,000 in 1951 to $20 million by 1955. “We couldn’t keep up with the demand.”

Eventually, other companies started copying the idea, and soon “18 to 20 companies were doing paint-by-number kits,” he said. What helped them fight the competition, he said, was creating a catalog that showed all the paint-by-number pictures that Craft Master had available — from bullfighters to ballerinas to landscapes. A Super Craft Master set — selling for $8.95 — contained 90 colors. “We tried portraits, but couldn’t make any money,” Robbins said.

“We never did any marketing research, just took leads from people who wrote in.”

Is paint-by-numbers art?

“No, it’s only the experience of picking up a brush, etc., of what a real artist goes through,” he said.

The company’s most popular work: the Last Supper. And Robbins even created a 9/11 tribute painting.

Robbins, a Cass Technical High School graduate, said some “artists” even sign their paint-by-number projects and he’s been known to add his signature to theirs.

And about that initial abstract that didn’t appeal to Klein: The Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., chose to display it in a paint-by-numbers exhibit.

Dan Robbins is the author of the book “Whatever Happened to Paint-by-Numbers?” (Possum Hill Press, $16.95).